So whilst browsing Google+ one day (yes, someone still uses G+!), I discovered a wargamer playing with some paper miniatures, printed on their normal printer. Just simple silhouettes of modern soldiers, but effective enough for proxies on the cheap.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything… Since being in the new house, tinkering with my 3D printer has absorbed roughly 75% of my free time. Although I got my printer and kit-form (with oh-so-useful hidden instructions written in Chinese), I was fully expecting some work to be involved. But I wasn’t expecting the learning curve I found! See these failed test prints…

3D printing is a wonderful and interesting new technology, but it is not consumer-ready by any stretch of the imagination. If you decide to invest in a 3D printer, prepare to learn everything about how it works. And if you’re not willing to spend many hours tweaking, learning, and failing repeatedly, I recommend not buying a printer. Just order 3D printed objects from a maker online if you desperately need something.

I faced several issues on my journey to reliable prints (and they could still be improved), but below you’ll find my essential setup tips.

I’m finally somewhat settled in the new house, and have simultaneously had the time, space, and motivation to build my Prusa i3 clone!

This is the built printer, before managing cables (not the zip ties in the corner). The build was slow going, as there was no instruction pamphlet in the box, and being a no-name Shenzhen factory special, I had no model name or site to visit. It is similar to many documented kits, but not identical. As I was winging-it during construction, there were times I had to go backwards and rebuild when I’d missed something…

Recently, I received a 3D printer kit for my birthday from the ever wonderful ladyfriend (unfortunately, I haven’t been able to assemble it due to space/time constraints, but very shortly will be in my new house with enough room to build it). With that in mind, I started playing around learning how to use FreeCAD, to generate lots to print!

The first object worth sharing is the “Lament Configuration”, AKA the box from Hellraiser

The above picture is how it will supposedly turn out. I will, of course, report when I’ve attempted to print it myself. All the files are available over on my Thingiverse, if you fancy printing it for yourself first. Let me know how that goes if you try!

Well, I’ve knocked together a bit of “plumbing” code, to make a vocal interface to the internet chatbot Cleverbot. So far it works – as well as can be expected with cleverbot – and it will be eventually added into an as-yet-unannounced hardware project I’m working on.

Here is a little demo I put on youtube of it in action…

All my code will be available on GitHub at some point, but it is ugly as sin. So I won’t give you a link just yet, but I’m sure you can find it if you are that motivated!

At some point I want to move away from Cleverbot, to a locally hosted chatbot. Anybody with any suggestions for that, feel free to share in the comments.

For a very close friends birthday, I wanted to do something special. As I’d already modified a few gameboys by this point I thought I’d up my game in that department. He is a massive Zelda fanboy, who’d preordered both the limited edition Zelda 3DS (based on Ocarina of Time), and the limited edition Zelda Wii U (based on Wind Waker), I thought he’d appreciate a DMG gameboy done in the style of Link’s Awakening.

Links Awakening Limited Edition DMG

He’s not into making chiptune, so I didn’t bother putting in a line-out or any other such hardware. But I did custom decals on a new shell, matching buttons, and a backlight. And it came out looking great! His face when he opened it (along with a copy of Link’s Awakening) was worth all the time I put into it.

After the jump there are some pics of what the official limited edition 3DS & Wii U look like. I think I copied the basic design ideas pretty well. Let me know in the comments!